Austin, Leclerc hindered by Ferrari strategy
The last hat-trick of the season doesn’t start well for Ferrari. Charles’ SF-23 started from pole position in Austin Leclerc he finished in sixth place after a series of episodes that compromised his performance. The Monegasque is not free from blame, just think of the uncertain start with which he was overtaken by Lando Norris and a certain passivity in the strategic indications to be given at the wall, but it is clear that the blame falls much more on those who have to decide the tactics of race and has all the numbers to do it. Team principal Frederic Vasseur he doesn’t hide and shows his face: for the Frenchman, the strategy compromised Leclerc’s race.
Vasseur’s words
“Obviously I have some regrets because when you start from pole you can’t be happy with a 4th and 6th place. On Sainz’s side everything went pretty well, we finished about four seconds behind Norris and I think it was a pretty well managed race“, commented the Frenchman a Sky Sports F1. “On Charles’ side it was different, we went with one stop and it was clearly not the right decision. We compromised his race with strategy“.
“We had discussed this strategy with him, we didn’t suddenly take it to the wall. It was one of the options, but the numbers we had were probably not the best. The others decided on the two stops with more conviction, which we didn’t do: we need to improve on this aspect. We only overtook Carlos to save time for Charles, who in fact managed to stay ahead of Russell on the last lap“, he continued.
“We cannot be happy with this result because we needed to have a clearer picture before the race, and we failed on this. We should have had a clearer strategy for Charles. We were a bit undecided and the one we made wasn’t the right choice. It’s always easy to strategize retrospectively after the race. Yesterday he was struggling with the tires but he also had confidence that he could do a better job today, and honestly that was the case, he managed the tire well in difficult conditions. But the strategy was not good“.
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